Chris Foreman

Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Chris Foreman is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution where he was a full-time member of the Governance Studies staff for over a decade. He is also director of the social policy program at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy where he writes and teaches about the politics of national domestic policy and inequality.

Chris Foreman is best known in environmental circles for his landmark Brookings book The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice in which he discusses the achievements, prospects and pitfalls associated with addressing environmental inequalities. Foreman followed his 1998 book with several essays and dozens of presentations including testimony before the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Foreman argues that while environmental equity is now a key aspect of our dialogue about environmental policy, advocacy on its behalf remains deeply problematic, regularly captive of rhetorical and coalitional imperatives that undermine pursuit of a realistic and focused policy agenda. Foreman has also published books about congressional oversight of regulatory policy and policymaking for emergent public health hazards. From 1999 to 2005 he served on the board of governors of The Nature Conservancy.